Much better to do a good repair to the cover and use either the plug style fasteners or the WSW fastener kit.
We have done a number of repairs to the covers with no failures after the repairs.
We use a plastic repair kit that actually welds plastic to plastic. It includes everything you need, excluding tools, to repair major and minor cracks and if you have a missing tab you can easily shape a piece of ABS plastic that you can then weld to the side cover.
Plastic Repair kit